This new variety of lily plant originated as seedling selected from a group of seedlings planted by me at Sandy, Oreg., and resulting from a crossing of a very short, cream colored clonal selection from the `pastel hybrids` strain as the seed parent, with a golden orange flowered seedling from `Connecticut Lemonglow`.times.`Red Carpet` (both unpatented) as the pollen parent. The object of this crossing was the production of lilies in shades of orange and gold well suited to forcing for pot plant production out-of-season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art.
The selected seedling of this new lily plant was asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., and successive generations of this variety produced by bulb scale propagation and by natural propagation from bulblets demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of the selected seedling hold true in this variety under asexual propagation from generation to generation and appear to be firmly fixed. Work with this new variety under my direction has demonstrated that it remains short and is not overly susceptible to bud abortion when forced into flower out-of-season as a pot plant, and in addition the clone possesses to a high degree the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness and disease resistance, as well as all of the desired characteristics of excellence of form, color and habit.
This plant has also been found to be well suited to forcing out-of-season when the bulbs are dug at the appropriate time and properly precooled; October-dug bulbs, properly precooled and potted in January, will flower under glass in western Oregon, with no supplementary lighting and at moderate greenhouse temperatures, in an average of seventy to seventy-five days.